In Ivor Macfarlane's most recent article, he (rightfully) points out that we should look beyond cost to improve service management. Cost used to be the major (if not only) factor in making IT decisions, but it isn't any more, especially when it comes to service management. IT services deliver a lot more than economic savings. They create new possibilities, generate new business advantages, empower new services and strategies, connect organizations with new customers and markets, and much more.

Ivor explains it much more eloquently than I, but here are a few things I took away from his article:

The concept of "cost" as a way of assessing IT services should transform to "value," which is fundamental to ITIL at its core. Take these definitions straight from ITIL:

"A service is a means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific cost and risks."

"Service Management is a set of specialized organizational capabilities for providing value to customers in the form of services."

Instead of talking about TCO (Total Costs of Ownership), we should talk about CCO (Complete Consequences of Operation). As IT services become more and more pervasive, the consequences of problematic IT service management become more and more significant.

There are other factors that should be considered as well,such as energy management/sustainability, public relations, human resource allocation and more.

In a nutshell, IT service management should address costs, value, consequences and benefits. Definitely food for thought. (Perhaps Curry in a Hurry?)

And just what are Proven Practice Workshops? First of all, they're new to Pulse 2011 - reason enough to check them out. Second, in these workshops, you'll hear from leading Tivoli Services experts about their proven implementation best practices and guidance. Tivoli Services will lead 5 of these dynamic workshops:

Business Service Management

Cloud

Integrated Service Management

Security

Storage

Each workshop will provide real-world value, including best practices, reference architectures, solution optimization, cross-domain integration, effective rollout strategies and common myths and pitfalls. For hands-on, practical information on how to get better ROI from the infrastructure, it's hard to beat the Proven Practice Workshops at Pulse 2011. Learn more about these workshops in the article Pulse 2011: Proven Practice Workshops Maximize ROI.

Special Interest Areas

Pulse 2011 will deliver more information, in more ways, on more relevant subjects, than ever before. With such a rich array of information to choose from, some of you may be wondering: "How can I zero in on exactly the right sessions for me?"

Pulse has got this solved through Special Interest Areas, of which there are seven:

Best practices and implementation

Cloud computing

Economics

Energy management

Midsize business

System Z

Virtualization

Once you've registered for Pulse, you can begin using IBM's Pulse SmartSite to build your personalized agenda. From the Agenda Builder section, you can search for relevant sessions in several different ways—one of which is by Special Interest Area. You can see below the Virtualization Special Interest area:

We didn't waste too much time with closing the deal on July 20th, 2010 and then cut to January 25th of this year and we announced Tivoli EndPoint Manager, built on BigFix technology (Announcement Letter: 211-048) would be electronically available on February 01.

There's a great press release that gives a high-level view of what this offering is all about (also on PRNewswire) and Angela Reese wrote a great blog about it as well.

Basically, this solution allows customers to manage and secure physical and virtual endpoints.

IBM Tivoli Endpoint Manager solution is positioned as the endpoint lifecycle management engine for integrated solutions that enforce efficient configuration compliance, optimize change management processes, and enable a self-request software management service for the end users.

IBM Tivoli Endpoint Manager solution monitors and enforces security and compliance at the enterprise endpoints, providing a single management platform for endpoint security and compliance.

Together with other IBM security offerings such as the Tivoli Access Manager for Enterprise Single Sign On, the IBM Tivoli Endpoint Manager solution provides comprehensive endpoint management and access control.

If you're coming to Pulse (and if you're reading this blog, you really should be coming to Pulse), you'll hear about this solution in a few of our sessions as well as be able to see it in the expo center.

And if you can't wait, here's a good whitepaper with more information.

The secret's out...there's something coming to Vegas on Sunday, February 27th that you just don't want to miss!

And what could that something be? Hint: It's not the latest incarnation of the Red Piano show. But for those of you interested in how to apply service management concepts in the real world, it's even better....it's the Integrated Service Management Workshop (Cloud Version) at Pulse 2011!

Yes, Las Vegas is know for it's gaming, and the Service Management Simulator Workshop could turn out to be a game changer for you and your company! The Integrated Service Management Simulator Workshop is a hands-on simulation game which focuses on the challenges and business value of implementing Service Management best practices in the context of a realistic and exhilarating scenario. During the session, participants use gaming dynamics to mirror the real-world interaction between IT and the business, from both a strategic and operational perspective. Over the course of a few hours, you'll experience a transformation from chaos to order - in the context of a complex technical infrastructure - and learn what it takes to align key IT infrastructure resources to deliver on mission in measurable terms.

Note that seating is absolutely limited to 20 participants - seats will be filled on a first respond/first serve basis. Don't wait - reserve your spot by sending an email to tivmktg@us.ibm.com.

I recently booked
my travel for a business trip to the US at the end of February. I will
be talking at several itSMF USA Local Interest Groups and – of course – be attending IBM’s big
service management spectacular – Pulse in Las
Vegas from 27th February. I’m looking
forward to the trip, and not just to escape the British winter weather. I am
delivering our simulation ‘game’ on the Sunday at Pulse and Atlanta in March - they are always fun, especially
our new one with added cloud features. But the best part is getting to meet
people, customers and suppliers, both at Pulse and in the itSMF meetings. There
really is no substitute for meetings with grassroots practitioners to keep up
to date. And always fun too, you do still meet such nice people in this
business.

If there is
anyone out there actually reading this stuff, and is in Vegas for Pulse, or at
the LIG is San Francisco, Fort
Lauderdale or Atlanta
– do come and say hello. And if you would like to be part of our
cloud-flavoured SM simulation at Pulse please visit our landing page, and
then RSVP to tivmktg@us.ibm.com

But – not
unusually – I have distracted myself a little from where I thought I was going
when I started writing this. So … I booked some flights: from London
to Las Vegas and back to Europe from Atlanta about two weeks
later. As we all know, we live in the information age so immediately I started
to receive information. And I do admit it was information –I had booked a
flight to the US
and I got information about the situation in the country I was going to.

Let me divert
again a little bit and remind you – because you are all experts and know this
stuff – about a basic knowledge management concept; the spectrum that runs
data->information->knowledge->wisdom. At the beginning data is
extensive but not too helpful. If it ever reaches wisdom[1]
it actually helps you survive and thrive.

But back to that
travel information I was getting. Remember I had booked a flight in late
February to the Nevada desert; what I received
by email was warning me about traffic disruption in downtown WashingtonDC
in late January. I have subsequently been advised of snow problems in New York.Now this has good conversational value,
allowing me to sound knowledgeable and sympathetic on calls with New Yorkers,
but I suspect that was not the intention.

I interpret it
–this may be grossly unfair of me, but I am the customer and customer
perception is what matters – like this: travel advice is being planned and
delivered by someone who goes to the same desk in the same office everyday, and
rarely puts foot on an airplane. Of course the real culprit behind this is ease
of programming – data is cheap and plentiful, applying some basic ideas to turn
that into information is quite fun, sounds good and means you can despatch all
sorts of travel notice updates to people who will be travelling sometime in the
future. But it is – sorry but it really is – just using data because you have
it. Maybe they bill on the number of messages? Maybe they really think I want
to know? The real consequence is that I delete these emails unread now – so if
they were by some miracle to send me something useful, I would miss it
altogether.

Another example,
last year this system showed the kind of silo thinking that comes from not
knowing the customer’s environment – the kind you often see in service
management reporting. I spoke for itSMF Sweden
in Malmo, getting to Malmo is really easy – you fly to the nearest
airport and take the train direct from airport to town centre. But two factors
combined to deliver me information even less useful then usual. One, the system
thinks only in terms of flights and rental cars – I think it rather looks down
on train travel as a bit common. Those of us who use trains mostly have to buy
the ticket when we get to the station. Second factor is that the nearest
airport to Malmo is Copenhagen
– a lovely and convenient airport with great direct train services – but it
just happens to be in Denmark.
So, yes you guessed it, I got lots of travel advice about visiting Denmark, there could have been civil
insurrection and rioting in the streets in Malmo and they wouldn’t have told me – why
that’s a whole different country!

Now of course Sweden doesn’t
do insurrection, I travelled easily and had a good time at an excellent event
without any issues. But all this useless information I get seems symptomatic to
me of measuring the wrong things – probably something we are all guilty of,
because – as I have said before in these blogs – measuring the right things is
harder, but if we can manage it then it drives us into doing the right things.
Maybe at the real heart of this though is the simple statement, if you don’t
know what you are aiming at, you are unlikely to hit it.

I suppose if
somebody were to ask me what I want notifications about, I would be happy to
work with them, and set up delivering something that goes beyond information,
starts delivering knowledge and gets me the wisdom I need to make the right
decisions.

But if that is actually
ever to happen then those of us receiving all this useless information need to
realise it is – mostly – our fault. I could have responded offering to help
them improve, I could proactively tell them what I need – I could offer some of
my time as an investment in my own future knowledge and wisdom deliverables. But
It is easier (and more fun?) to carp and whinge – so maybe my New Year’s
resolution should have been around practising what I preach – doing what I
talked about in my itSMF conference presentations last year – and to start
being a good, committed constructive customer because it won’t get better
otherwise.

OK – I’m off to
find the ‘help us improve our service’ button on the web site. See you at Pulse?

[1] Best explanation of the step from knowledge
to wisdom is one I stole from my daughter, Rosie and it goes ‘Knowledge tells
you a tomato is a fruit, not a vegetable; wisdom is knowing that but also
knowing not to put it in a fruit salad’.